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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389399">hide out in every corner</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul'>meanderingsoul</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hugs, Mentors, Retirement, Team as Family, Visiting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:42:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389399</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They could be anyone. No one walking by knew who they were, knew what they could do. Just another couple standing by a rack of shoes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Phil Coulson &amp; Leo Fitz &amp; Melinda May, Phil Coulson &amp; Melinda May &amp; Jemma Simmons, Phil Coulson &amp; Melinda May &amp; Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hide out in every corner</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>Jemma</em>
</p><p> </p><p>This was a simple flash drive handoff, so Jemma met them halfway. The information was too sensitive to just send through the mail, but not urgent enough to assign someone to courier it out to Coulson and May’s place, let alone send it on a quinjet.</p><p>Parking a quinjet anywhere near the house they’d bought was for the direst emergencies only. There weren’t a lot of convenient clearings, unless you flew like May of course, and the time someone had landed in a crop field had led to a tiny article in the local paper about crop circles.</p><p>Coulson had it in a frame in his office now.</p><p>It wasn’t that much more than an hour’s drive anyway. It’d be nice to see them, always was. It was normal now to only see them both a handful of times a year, to text often and occasionally talk on the phone, normal to get most of her news on how they were from Daisy who drove out to their house about once a month.</p><p>They were all used to it now and the stability was a good thing, but it also had been normal for a long time sharing a kitchen and seeing each other every day. They were all grateful Coulson and May settled as close as they had. No one would have blamed them for picking a beach somewhere instead.</p><p>It was chillier outside then it looked like it ought to be, always was up here really. Jemma flexed her fingers when they prickled at the change of temperature inside the building, the walk from the borrowed car enough to make them cold.</p><p>It was a nice little café, small tables and mismatched mugs, not too many people. Coulson always seemed to find these places. They probably had more than two kinds of tea.</p><p>May had texted they were already here, but she hadn’t spotted them yet. Surely they weren’t on some outdoor patio in this weather? They both had old injuries that didn’t like the cold...</p><p>There was one man on a computer like there always was, the woman working at the counter, and a cozy looking couple in the corner with their heads close together. The man’s knit hat and the women’s plum sweater looked warm. She should have brought gloves.</p><p>Oh. Oh, that was <em>them</em> Jemma realized, a smile spreading across her face.</p><p>Coulson and May murmuring to each other off to the side of the room had always been a relatively familiar sight, but it was different now.</p><p>There were two drinks on the table already and a third chair waiting.</p><p>“Jemma!” Coulson stood up to greet her, shoving her chair out with a foot before tugging her into a one-armed hug.</p><p>She leaned into it, reached around his back and squeezed carefully even though it couldn’t hurt him anymore. May didn’t get up, but reached for her hand when she sat down, squeezed gently with a smile.</p><p>“They have good tea,” May said in lieu of any other greeting.</p><p>Jemma laughed a little, asked about the new skylight Daisy had mentioned. The flash drive in her pocket could wait a little longer.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Fitz</em>
</p><p> </p><p>This day and age and everyone involved having worked for Shield at some point and the plan was <em>still</em> public park benches in the middle of the day like something out of some ridiculous spy thriller.</p><p>Fitz kept walking, trying to keep a pace that said he was just out for a stroll in the spring air like everyone else. Nothing clandestine about this at all. There aren’t four spies in your city park. His boots crunched on the path gravel.</p><p>The resemblance of this to that kind of life was almost too close for comfort. He didn’t do this part of the job so much anymore, not that he’d ever been as much on the spy side of things as Jemma. It was just, better this way.</p><p>“Fitz, our contact’s not a threat, just skittish,” Coulson said through the comms.  </p><p>Fitz must have huffed or something. “Yeah, I get it. He’ll be less startled by you guys than me.” Then he muttered to himself, “I still have to bloody find you guys first.”</p><p>May snorted, so he hadn’t muttered quietly enough.</p><p>Fitz sighed. This guy was a bit of a packrat apparently. He might have exactly what Fitz needed to get the job done. He had parked the plain car about three streets over from this winding sort of park as agreed over the phone yesterday. So far he’d seen three joggers, a mum out with a stroller, one guy on a skateboard, and now an older couple sitting on a park bench.</p><p>The guy had his arm around his wife’s shoulders and his face down against her dark hair. It looked nice.</p><p>He hadn’t seen Simmons in days now, she’d had classes with exams and this really didn’t need two people. This was a work trip, not the kind of visit they had up here a couple times a year with everyone else, American Thanksgiving and sometimes for the new year and usually once in the summers. Fitz wanted to go home.</p><p>But when the woman leaned back to say something Fitz immediately recognized the side of her face.</p><p>Oh. That was them sitting right there.</p><p>It felt kind of stupid to not recognize them just because they were facing away, he’d lived with them for years after all. Coulson’s hair was greyer now and that wasn’t May’s usual kind of leather jacket, dark red and with some sort of knit collar, but it was still them.</p><p>Fitz had just... had no idea Coulson and May might be the kind of people who cuddled on park benches like somebody’s grandparents.</p><p>Fitz knew the smile on his face was too wide, too familiar when he walked by, but nobody seemed to care. Coulson grinned at him before giving the kind of friendly nod you’d make at a passing stranger. May’s eyes were warm.</p><p>Their contact didn’t react badly when Coulson stopped them, seemed much more startled by May for some reason. Fitz watched, walking slowly from a safe distance until Coulson invited him over to be introduced.</p><p>But of course, then Fitz needed to leave with him right away to find out if they guy actually did have the right old part in one of his warehouses or if Fitz was going to have to machine the whole bloody thing from scratch. Which meant he’d only spent a whole 10 minutes with Coulson and May after coming all the way up here, and it felt strange.</p><p>“It was nice to see you?” Fitz said, trying for levity.</p><p>Coulson made a rueful sort of grimace, reached out and squeezed a bit around the scruff of his neck. It was comfortingly familiar. “It won’t be such a rush next time,” he said, tugging Fitz into a hug.</p><p>The hugs were nice. He got a lot more of them these days. Reaching out to hug May next wasn’t strange anymore, though he never got used to having to lean down to do it. Their contact might have made a choking noise.</p><p>May patted his shoulder. “Better get a move on.”</p><p>“We’ll see you soon.”</p><p>It was a bit too close to fieldwork and no part to show for it, but still. This hadn’t been so bad.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Daisy</em>
</p><p> </p><p>They needed information about an old Shield mission that was a bit more than just fuzzy on the details in the old Toolbox that lived in Mack’s desk drawer. It happened sometimes.</p><p>Which meant they needed to contact an ex-Shield agent, which meant asking Coulson and May who they were and where would probably be best to meet them and if they were the kind of ex-agent who would wig out being approached by a stranger saying they were with Shield.</p><p>There were a lot of people during the collapse of the older, bigger Shield that went to the FBI or CIA. Some wound up at the Playground, others with the Shield Bobbi and Mack had been with. Most of those had joined together or walked away after the fight on the aircraft carrier. Daisy understood the numbers involved so much better these days.</p><p>But a bunch of others had just taken an early retirement from the intelligence game after Hydra’s failed takeover, vanished into cabins or taken random IT or accounting jobs or something where no one knew they’d ever been Shield.</p><p>This mall was apparently the best place for a casual intercept, something about walking routines.</p><p>Intercept. Totally. That was totally going to work out as intended in the most crowded mall she’d ever seen outside of Christmastime. She was starting to wonder if meeting up in creepy parking garages was really a bad thing. Daisy couldn’t even find <em>Coulson and May</em> so far.</p><p>How many shoe stores could this place possibly have? Let alone shoe stores near a fountain full of coins? She’d seen two already.</p><p>Then she heard it and almost tripped on the ugly ass carpet.</p><p>It wasn’t loud, but to Daisy’s ears it cut through the chattering crowd like it no one was even there. She turned towards the sound.</p><p>May was <em>laughing</em>.</p><p>It’d been a long, long time since she’d used to think of May as someone robotic. Daisy knew May’s quiet smiles, the way she huffed when something was funny, the moods where rolled her eyes or pressed her lips tight together. Daisy could recognize the two different kinds of smirks and the way her face kind of scrunched up when something was gross or she was teasing. She’d seen her <em>wink </em>once, just sometimes had a hard time believing it.</p><p>She had never heard May really laugh.</p><p>It still took Daisy a moment to spot them.</p><p>Turned out when it was real it was more of a giggle, a thrumming kind of sound behind her teeth while she smiled.</p><p>Coulson was teasing her about something or had just made a stupid joke, grin on his face and crinkly lines at the corners of his eyes. Daisy was used to seeing him in sweaters and jeans now. In sneakers. It wasn’t as much of an adjustment as it had been when the fancy suits first vanished.</p><p>May wasn’t in her combat boots, the ones she’d had custom made somewhere secretive, lifts inside and heavy in the heels and reinforced with metal around the toes. Getting kicked with them hurt for so many reasons. Daisy had tried them on one time, but her feet were bigger than May’s.</p><p>These were just normal boots, maybe an inch of heel, soft suede and useless for anything but walking around. She wasn’t even up to Coulson’s shoulders like this, grinning up at him with her chin near his chest, black painted nails and wine-red leather jacket Daisy would need to ask her where she’d bought it.</p><p>Daisy stood in the crowded walkway outside the shop and watched them a moment. Just watched.</p><p>They could be anyone. No one walking by her knew who they were, knew what they could do. No one else had turned to look when May laughed. Just another couple standing by a rack of shoes.</p><p>Maybe they still sort of had a mission, a little bit of a mission at least, but right now it felt more like she was kinda meeting her parents in a shopping mall just because. The kind of thing real families might do before they went out for lunch or something.</p><p>She got to have more of those moments these days. It was so worth all the other changes.</p><p>“Coulson! May!”</p><p>Daisy squeezed through the crowd with her arms out for hugs. She got them.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I think the original idea for this came up in conversation with preux-chevalier of how cute would it be if one of the bus kids saw Coulson and May being all sweet n couply and didn't recognize them at first. Then I had to collect three realistically different scenarios for that and write one for each. </p><p>Title is from Spies by Coldplay.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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